


trials and tribulations

by captainharkness



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Meeting the Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 15:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9768554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainharkness/pseuds/captainharkness
Summary: aka, an "uhoh i’m dating my boss’ child and had no idea until i took them as my date to a work function" AU.





	

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” he asked, for what must have been the fourth time in the last hour. Seth rolled his eyes and passive-aggressively threw a tie on the bed, on top of the rest of his suit for the night. Realistically, Dean knew that he was pushing his luck by asking again, bordering on annoying, but part of him hoped that he really had pushed too hard and that Seth would see sense and call off the entire night. 

For three years, Dean had been working the grills at a restaurant in downtown Chicago called Legacy. It was by far the best job he’d ever had, certainly the one he’d kept for the longest. He wasn’t a chef by any standards, but he could grill a steak or a burger, watch food go darker until it was the right shade of dark to be put on a plate. There was a lot of burning smells around the time he started, but he got the hang of it. 

Legacy was part of a chain of suitably pretentious restaurants that served all the kinds of standard bar meals with exciting twists that made him think it started at a shitty diner. All it would have taken was someone with some nice interior design and a lot of business intellect and viola, a proper restaurant. It did mean secure work, though, and a decent pay. He worked through the weekends but he had most of his days free to do whatever he liked, and he got to take home food at the end of the night. All in all, it was a sweet gig. 

Seth thought so too, used it as an excuse to make him cook all the time because Dean “was better at it than him”, which was true, but it was still a bullshit excuse. Seth was raised in some fancy house with adoptive parents who were very rich, and hadn’t learned to scramble eggs before he was twenty two. So, Dean was a better cook than him, but so were most four year olds. He was just too lazy to learn.

“Yes, I’m sure,” he insisted, “Do you not want to go?”

“Of course I don’t want to go,” Dean rolled his eyes, falling back to lie on the bed, “but I have to.”

He lifted his head a little to see Seth stood at the end of the bed, glaring down at him. It wasn’t particularly effective, because Seth pouted more than he knew, and he also wasn’t wearing a shirt, so Dean wasn’t paying much attention to his face anyway.

“You don’t have to go-”

“Not what Orton says.”

Randy Orton was the head chef at Legacy. He ran the place, alongside his partner, some guy called Cody - they were by far the most mismatched couple Dean had ever seen, and that was accounting for his own relationship. Orton was famous for his stuffed-orange salmon dish, his inability to hold his tequila and putting the fear of God into people. Not that it worked on Dean, it didn’t. And Orton knew it as well, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t his boss, and it didn’t mean that Dean wanted to clean the grills with a toothbrush at 8am on Monday morning, which Orton was not above making him do. Dean wasn’t scared of him, not by a mile, but he valued his beauty sleep.

Seth just shook his head, the newly dyed blonde patch in his hair a little brighter than it had been that morning. He was still damp and flushed from a shower, and Dean was struck with the overwhelming urge to phone in, tell his boss that he was sick and take the whole weekend off all together. 

He sat up, hands going to Seth’s hips, and pressed his mouth to his partner’s stomach. Seth was warm and smelled like soap and steam, he hadn’t sprayed anything on after he got out of the shower so there was no bitter aftertaste in Dean’s mouth as he started to run open mouthed kisses across Seth’s torso. He felt the vibrations from a contented hum against his lips, making his smile. 

“You still sure you want to go?” Dean asked, resting his chin against Seth’s hip and looking up at him. 

There was a moment’s hesitation where he thought he might have won, but Seth just took a handful of his hair and pulled, making Dean’s head snap back almost painfully, “Positive. Go get ready.” He let go without another word, just a kiss to his partner’s lips, leaving Dean sat in his room, feeling a little bit sorry for himself and a little bit turned on.

**_~.~.~.~_ **

The end of the year numbers were in, and apparently, the four strong chain of restaurants that Legacy made up one quarter of had made a hell of a profit that year. Big enough that all the boss people in their fancy suits had decided to throw a  _ function _ to show their appreciation, which might have been nice for everybody else, but Dean saw enough of the fuckers at work. He didn’t want to spend his free time with them, too.

He especially didn’t want to spend it with them in the events room of a hotel way too fancy for any of them, wearing some monkey suit and goddamned  _ tie _ at that. He didn’t want to have to steal tiny scraps of food off of trays as they whizzed by his face like shiny fucking frisbees loaded with forkfuls of over seasoned crap, even the waiters looking at him like he was a piece of shit because he didn’t pronounce his t’s. The saving grace of the night was Seth, and Seth was going with  _ him _ \- Dean had never been able to say he had a plus one before in his life, it was something of a milestone - and Seth was gorgeous, and smart, and he grew up with people who did this sort of stuff everyday. Seth looked at home in a suit, with his hand on Dean’s shoulder, steering him through the lobby because he knew that he had no idea where he was going.

“It’s going to be fine,” he insisted in hushed tones as they neared the door, “We’ll stand around, speak to a few people, mingle, listen to a boring speech, and then leave.”

It was moments like that that made Dean very grateful that someone like Seth gave him the time of day. Even if it had only been three months, it was more than he deserved. The one-night-stand that turned into a three-night-stand, Dean only leaving the bed to go to his Tuesday night shift with a kiss to Seth’s head and the offer to stay another night if didn’t have a way of getting home, wandering in back at four in the morning and finding him curled up on the sofa, watching Die Hard, waiting for him.

Seth, who was a genius with his own architecture firm, who rose above his asshole adoptive family and never even bothered to mention them, who walked away from it all to be who he wanted to be and somehow, still thought Dean was good enough for him.

Moments like walking into a room with high ceilings and actual fucking chandeliers and finding it a little bit easier to breathe because Seth had a hand on his lower back, guiding him straight towards the bar. Those were the moments that words like ‘relationship’ and ‘boyfriend’ and ‘maybe a little bit in love with him’ circled his mind, and that really made Dean’s head spin so he focussed on which of the hard liquors to go for first.

They made small talk with a few people that Dean recognised first; Sami, one of the bar staff from Legacy, who was already well on his way to tipsy, and AJ, who was a chef at another of the restaurants - the one in Midtown, Champion - who Dean knew from various other work nights out. She’d subbed in for someone in Legacy once, and he was happy to see that she looked as at home as he did, still wearing Chuck Taylors, despite the ‘formal dress code’. She beamed and went on her way, leaving Seth more than a little confused.

They ordered their drinks when they reached the open bar, both opting for hard liquor. There was still a warm hand at his back, and Dean was happy for the pressure as he sipped his whiskey, Seth leaning in closer to whisper in his ear, not that it was completely necessary, “Did I mention how good you look in that suit before we left?”

Dean was fully aware of how good he looked in a suit, but it felt like dressing up. It felt like putting on something good so he didn’t look how he usually looked. Seth  _ wore _ suits like a second skin. Especially all black three-pieces. Dean was very fond of that particular suit, even more so when it was pressed up against his side with all of Seth’s body heat seeping through it. 

“You might have,” Dean muttered, “but I’ve forgotten. You’ll need to remind me when we get home.”

There was a warm feeling against his neck as Seth huffed out a laugh, moving back, but only slightly. They were still pressed together, side by side, looking for all the world like a particularly over-familiar couple, if a little anti-social, stood at the end of the bar with their drinks, ignoring everyone else. 

“How would you like me to do that?”

Dean took a sip of his drink, letting the warmth seep down his throat and pool in his stomach, settling beside the heat that Seth was fanning softly with a gentle voice and a hard thigh pushed up against him, “Well, you can start with taking yours off.”

“Is that so?” Seth rocked back on his heels to lean against the bar instead of Dean’s side, quirking his head to the side and looking up at him through his lashes. 

Dean nodded solemnly, “It’s very hard to look good when you’re walking round lookin’ like that.”

Seth beamed, “You hitting on me, Ambrose?”

There was a fully formed comeback on his lips, ready to snark back and maybe instigate a largely inappropriate make out session at his work’s night do, but he was cruely interrupted by someone calling his name. 

“Hey, Ambrose!”

His last name didn't sound nearly as nice in Orton’s mouth as it did in Seth’s, but then again, Dean was of the opinion that Orton should have kept his mouth shut about just about everything except for traditional Italian dishes. He came from the same blue blood hellhole that Seth did, all nice and shiny looking in his suit, two fingers of scotch in a glass that was so cliché, he doubted it was anything more than a prop. 

“Orton,” Dean nodded, barely trying to cover his irritation, “Fancy seeing you here.”

“I could say the same,” he smirked back, the smarmy bastard, “I honestly thought I’d get a call from you, saying that you were horrifically ill or something.”

“It was a close call,” he said brightly, with as much sarcasm as he could pack into five words. Seth swallowed around a laugh beside him, Orton noticing him for the first time.

They exchanged brief nods, which was wholly better manners than Dean was expecting from his boss and distinctly more cold than Seth’s usual decorum - he might have diverted from his family but old habits died hard - especially when faced with a stranger. Given, Dean spent the better part of his time bitching about how he dreamt about hitting Orton with his car.

The amused half-smile Orton’s mouth twisted into, and the crease between his eyebrows, is what got to Dean more, “Didn’t think I’d see you here.”

Seth stiffened, leaning back until he was pressed up against Dean’s chest. Dean’s arm came to rest around his waist, a little supportive but mostly possessive. They’d met at Legacy - Seth was something of a regular - so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that the two had crossed paths, but he couldn’t imagine the circumstances that had led to… a  _ standoff _ . They were glaring at each other.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Orton’s eyes flitted to Dean, to his hand gripping tightly at Seth’s side, “Of course. How long have you been… dating?”

There was something disbelieving and mocking about the way his boss pronounced the word ‘dating’, enough that Dean wanted to step forward and ask him what the fuck he was talking about, but something told him to let Seth handle it. At least Seth knew what was happening, “Few months,” he said shortly.

“Has he met the family yet?” The smirk on Orton’s face was bordering on poisonous, Seth practically vibrating under Dean’s hand, “I’ll take that as a no.”

“What the fu-” Dean snapped, ready to fly off the handle because Seth didn’t speak about his family, didn’t even mention them, Dean didn’t even know their names. There were no pictures of them at his apartment and he never called home. As far as he knew, he completely cut off from them and never looked back. It was startling clear that Orton and Seth knew each other beyond a simple manager-customer relationship, but he didn’t really care about the how or what.

Seth stopped him with a grunt and an elbow to the ribs, just in time for someone else to butt into their conversation. 

“Seth, my boy!”

Vince fucking McMahon was walking towards them, beaming at Seth like an old friend. Vince McMahon, who owned a string of hotels across the country and whose shoes were worth more than Dean’s entire family going back several generations, was holding Seth’s face in his hands like they were family, and Seth was, oddly, smiling back. It looked forced, but he was still smiling.

“Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?” Vince demanded happily, moving his hands to clap on Seth’s shoulders before he noticed Dean beside them, “And you brought a plus one? Your mother will be delighted.”

Dean blinked as the older man took his hand without bothering to offer a handshake, just shook Dean’s loose arm, grinning at him like a maniac, too wide and too full of teeth to be genuine.

Seth coughed slightly, “Actually, I’m his plus one.”

Vince raised an eyebrow and dropped Dean’s hand as Orton spoke up to explain, “Ambrose is one my chefs at Legacy. I wasn’t aware he and Seth were together, though. Small world, isn’t it?”

Seth looked like he was about to knock Orton’s teeth down his throat, but Vince saved them from actually starting a brawl, “Well, I like to think he hasn’t left our orbit completely. Maybe not so small after all.”

Dean didn’t think he had ever experienced anything as surreal as that moment. He knew Seth came from money, from a family with ties to people with their fingers in all kinds of pies, but he hadn’t realised that he was anywhere near the vicinity of the McMahons. They were  _ old  _ money, the kind with estates and net worths and magazine covers. In fact, Hunter Helmsley, the son-in-law of the man in front of him, was the one who owned Legacy. Which probably meant that the very fancy hotel that he was stood in was one of the McMahon’s, which explained how they ended up with such a nice reception, at least. 

One question down, ninety nine to go.

Seth shifted awkwardly on his feet, clearing his throat, “Sir, this is my partner-” Dean tried to not let his face flush because they’d never discussed this, never decided on what they were other than  _ good _ , but he had to guess that Seth wasn’t allowed to introduce him as “the guy he’s been fucking for a couple of months” so really, it was better than the truth, “Dean Ambrose. Dean, this is my grandfather, Vince McMahon.”

Dean swallowed his tongue.

“It’s lovely to meet you, my friend,” Vince said, voice laced with the kind of enthusiasm that could only mean that it was false, “I wish I could say I’d heard all about you, but Seth’s still on his mission to ‘find himself’,” He rolled his eyes playfully, like starting your own business and running it more than successfully was some kind of childish habit that he would grow out of, “But it’s good to hear that you’re working under Orton. Must be good at your job, I respect that.”

“It’s a pleasure, sir.”

He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Seth was a McMahon. Seth was Vince McMahon’s grandson. Seth was Hunter Helmsey’s son. Seth was his boss’s son.

At some point in his deep panic, Vince excused himself, and left Seth standing with his face in his hands as Orton chuckled heartily into his glass. Dean was dating his boss’s son.

He couldn’t decipher the exact emotion pulsing through him; shock, probably. It wasn’t anger, he wasn’t  _ angry  _ at Seth. He wasn’t even disappointed, or upset. It was more like… confusion. Frustration. The need to keep secrets was something he understood, and if they had gone on with their lives, be it together or apart, with Dean never knowing, it might have been okay. 

But to find out because Seth neglected to mention until Dean was choking on his own saliva in front of one of the wealthiest men in the state felt more like betrayal than he was willing to admit.

He looked at Seth for the first time since the exchanged started, the two-toned man’s face bright red, looking all the world like he wanted to jump out the nearest window, “I can explain-”

“You’re Hunter Helmsey’s  _ son _ ?”

Seth opened his mouth, shut it again, then opened it again, “Like I was saying, I can explain.”

“Please, do. I’d love to understand.”

“I was going to tell you, I didn’t count on him showing up this soon, okay?”

Dean just blinked at him, “We  _ met _ at Legacy. You meet me from work like once a week. I don’t understand why you didn’t say something sooner?”

Seth looked at him helplessly, “I was going to tell you tonight, I just didn’t get a chance. I didn’t want to tell you because I don’t want you to look at me and see them, because I’m not like them. I don’t want that reputation on my back-”

“Seth, I know you,” Dean hissed, acutely aware that Orton was still stood only four feet away, “I don’t care about your reputation or your family’s reputation because I already  _ know  _ you!”

He regretted his words almost immediately, even though he wasn’t sure which bit he shouldn’t have said, because Seth looked like he was ready to cry. He’d always suspected that the tension surrounding this particular topic was something more than the pressure Seth’s parents put on him, but he’d never tried to pry.

Attempting to backtrack to salvage the conversation, the  _ night _ , Dean cupped his boyfriend’s face, “Hey, we’ll talk about it later, okay? Just gotta get through tonight-”

Orton cleared his throat far louder than was necessary, “Look alive, boys.”

Dean didn’t have the chance to ask what was happening before Seth’s back snapped straight, any sign of upset on his face already vanished, replaced with a tight, polite smile. Dean pulled his hand back out of shock more than anything, turning round just in time to find Hunter and Stephanie walking towards them. He’d only seen them a few times, at team meetings and bullshit nights like the Christmas party.

It was Stephanie that rushed forwards first, enveloping her son in her arms like they hadn’t seen each other in years (and maybe they hadn’t) while her husband hung back. In another life, Stephanie McMahon would have been the sort of terrifying woman Dean would have hit on mercilessly at a bar for the sheer thrill. Every inch of her was polished and she stank of power in a way that probably made lesser men piss their pants when levelled with that gaze. Seth, God love him, took it head on.

Regardless of actual measurements, Hunter seemed to be about three times the size of every man in the room. Even Orton, who wasn’t small himself, and had an ego to match, seemed to shrink in his size. The boss’ eyes travelled from his son, to his head chef, and finally to Dean. While Stephanie fussed over Seth, Dean and Orton stayed silent and still.

Hunter waited it out for a few moments, before holding his hand out, “Randy, good to see you again, friend.”

Orton shook the proffered hand, “You too, Hunter. The reception is fantastic, if I may say so.”

“That you may,” he chuckled, actually chuckled, like a fucking Bond villain, “It’s been well earned.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, he turned to Dean, same warm, well-practiced smile on his face, hand outstretched once again, “Mister Ambrose, I hear good things about your cooking.”

White noise filled Dean’s ears. The clean lines of Hunter’s suit seemed to taunt him. It was instinct alone that made him shake the man’s hand, a slurred “thank you, sir” falling from his lips that probably made no sense to anyone. And thank God for Seth.

“All well deserved, trust me,” he interrupted, wrapping an arm around Dean’s waist and bringing him back to life a little. The shock and terror of facing not only his boss but his boyfriend’s father, who somehow knew his name, faded slightly. “I’m forever making him cook at home, it’s a miracle he hasn’t kicked me out yet-”

“Still can’t cook for shit, Seth?”

He smiled as he said it, but the faint tones of scathing mocking didn’t go unheard by anyone in the group, if Stephanie’s scowl or Seth’s teeth grinding together were any indication. Orton kept his face well schooled, free of emotion.

“No, I can’t.”

There were a few tense seconds where it was unclear whether there was going to be an honest to God brawl, but Hunter only grinned, slapping his thigh as he laughed, “Ah, well I suppose it’s a good thing you’ve found someone who can. Must dash, apparently I’m supposed to make a speech in a moment.” He spared them all one last glance, and a “boys.” before turning away.

Seth and Dean were still holding on to each other for dear life, Orton had finished his prop of scotch and was motioning to the bartender for a refill.

“I must say, I was expecting a rather dull evening, but I might just tag along with you two,” he said, lips curling up in something that might be called a smile. “You’re anything but boring, I’ll give you that.”

**_~.~.~.~_ **

It was later, when Dean was curled around Seth’s back, both piled under the thick duvet because the heating was shit in Dean’s block, that he finally said something that had been lingering in his mind for a few hours.

“You didn’t have to come.”

Seth hummed, “What do you mean?”

“I gave you every chance to get out of it,” Dean muttered, trying to find space on his pillow that hadn’t been commandeered by Seth’s unruly hair. It looked like he was just going to have to settle for spitting it out the whole night. “You told me you haven’t spoken to them in years, you didn’t have to come with me and face them.”

“They would have known already.”

Dean nudged his boyfriend, who was clearly falling asleep, until he turned around to face him, “How?”

Seth’s bleary eyes blinked up at him, “Randy. He would have told them the second he knew.” When Dean didn’t reply, he rubbed his face. “Dating one of his grill chefs is the closest I’ve been to them since I left home, I think he likes that he can keep an eye on me when I’m with you.”

“You still didn’t have to come down with me.”

“And let you face them alone?” Seth gave him a withering look. “What sort of shitty boyfriend would I be then?”

For the fourth time that night, he was left speechless and floored and so full of affection for the man slowly insinuating himself into his personal space like an over friendly octopus. There was nothing else to do but roughly turn Seth onto his back, ignoring his protest, and cover him with his own body. He pressed kisses to his face, his neck, his mouth, and Seth laughed, and it was good.


End file.
